True Believers . . .

The most important question in American politics at the moment is this -- how many likely Republican voters are like the hard core Freepers and are willing to swallow any load crap from the Republican party and blame the Democrats for everything:

. . .

To: Taggart_D

It's possible Hastert is also a victim. Evidence indicates it is the Democrats who knew and sat on the info. All this hysteria is playing into the Democrats' hands.

6 posted on 10/03/2006 4:17:25 AM PDT by Conservativegreatgrandma

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ] . . .

To: Taggart_D

Why should he resign?

He's got an R in front of his title apparently. All republicans share a common guilt due to the 'vast right wing conspiracy' mentality. Other than that he doesn't seem to be in any way shape or form involved.

8 posted on 10/03/2006 4:17:50 AM PDT by kinoxi (.)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ] . . .

To: Taggart_D

There MUST be an investigation and it MUST be led by Barney Franks. If that would be inappropriate perhaps Gary Studds could be lured out of retirement.

11 posted on 10/03/2006 4:20:03 AM PDT by rhombus

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]. . .

To: Homer1

From what I've heard so far.

Hastert had emails that were not suggestive. Democrat operatives had the instant messages that were disgusting. They've had them for a couple YEARS and sat on them.

Democrats should fall on their swords. All of them.

14 posted on 10/03/2006 4:21:29 AM PDT by listenhillary (Islam = Religion of peace. If you say otherwise, we'll kill you!)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ] . . .

Limbaugh . . .

What do you do if your job and self esteem are completely tied up with the notion that conservatives and Republicans are virtuous and liberals and Democrats are evil at a time when the country is reeling from incompetent Republican leadership? If you are Rush Limbaugh, you rant and rave like a loon and make an ass of yourself:

You know, Republicans are said to be racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic. The liberal policy, liberal philosophy is to assume bad behavior, bad human behavior. They assume it, they have a condescending look toward people in general. It's what makes them liberals. People are incapable of doing the right thing without liberals' guidance, people are incapable of making the right decisions to get ahead in life without liberal guidance, they're incapable of earning a decent living. . . Liberalism assumes bad human behavior and then coddles it as imperfect. After they coddle imperfect, bad human behavior, they are able to say those who judge imperfections in people and come out strong for right and wrong, the simplistic black and white, good versus evil, people who come out for law and order and so forth, they're the sinners, because none of us are perfect. The liberals understand this, they coddle the imperfections, they create victims out of those who are imperfect, turning them into a cause celebre, and blaming the right, these Draconian, intolerant, inflexible people who judge others while ignoring their own foibles.

This explains why the liberals are able to accept genocide in places like Iraq if it furthers their agenda. Because everybody is flawed. Saddam Hussein is flawed and he's just a bad guy, we understand that, we need understand this about people. They expect the worst from people, and they want the worst from people tolerated, and that is a sign of compassion. . . Their view of conservatives and Republicans is that we are intolerant of anybody who is not like us, and so we must be made to pay the price for holding a standard that they do not. I'll give you a quick illustration. When Clinton was elected, during the week leading up to the inaugural -- I told you this story before. They had all these parties and ceremonies and little get-togethers on the mall in Washington, had people like Aretha Franklin in there to sing and other big-time entertainers. The list of songs they were singing were songs like We Shall Overcome, or We Got Out Of Jail Today all because a liberal Democrat had been elected after the 12 years of the judgmentalism of the Reagan and Bush years.

UPDATE: Daniel Larison fills in the blanks.

Everybody Dies

That's the simplified plot summary of this Louis Bromfield novel.

Sweet Fifteen

Back in 2001, David Brooks took a few trips to the wilds of rural Pennsylvania and discovered that "Red Americans" are laconic, hard workin' and modest. I remember it well, because I live in flyover country and Brooks' view of us seemed like a load of crap having more to do with how Madison Avenue views Middle America (Think Marlboro Man and Chevy "like a rock" trucks).

The Knoxville News Sentinel (registration required) provides another view of flyover country in the form of an MTV-inspired "sweet fifteen" party complete with a Hummer Limo, Shirtless hunks with body-glitter and Georgia rapper Bubba Sparxxx:

The fanfare is short and sweet, as Brittany and the court make their way back into the inn. Brittany re-emerges in a neutral empire-waist Bianca Nero gown with silver beading.

The birthday girl dances and chats with friends and well-wishers.

After the dance troupe performs, Brittany is pulled onto the black-and-white dance floor for a little treat, lap dances from the group's male members. Her mother receives one, too.


Big surprises After another costume change, this time a blue silk halter dress, Brittany is ready for the night's entertainment headliner, Georgia rapper Bubba Sparxxx.

"Bubba, Bubba, Bubba," the restless crowd chants.

When he walks onto the stage, the youngsters explode with applause and yells. Digital and phone cameras are raised high, like high-tech lighters.

"Happy birthday, Brittany. We love you," shouts the rapper. "We are thrilled to be here. There is no place we would rather be than here in Knoxville, celebrating Brittany's birthday. It's great to be a part of so much love."

Sparxxx opens his set with "Deliverance," his first single, and closes with his biggest hit to date, "Miss New Booty," which is Brittany's ring tone on her cell phone.

After performing the crowd-pleaser, Sparxxx calls an embarrassed Brittany onto the stage and gives the princess a new title.

"Make some noise for Knoxville's official Miss New Booty," he says.

Rightwing Porn

Ben Stein indulges in rightwing political porn:

On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that's not great. On the other hand, we have a Democratic party that worships ( not likes, WORSHIPS ) a man named Bill Clinton who did not send suggestive e-mails as far as we know, but who had a barely legal intern give him oral sex kneeling under his desk in the Oval Office while he talked on the phone to a Congressional Committee Chairman . . . and having her fellate him when in the sacred seat of power of the world's leading Republic. And the Democrats cheer themselves hoarse for him. His wife has a great shot at being our next President.

Stein seemed to have spent a lot visualizing while he was writing this creepy paragraph, I feel the need to take a shower after reading it. One thing that has bothered me for eight years now -- when and how did the Whitehouse become "sacred"?

Book Chat

I've yet to be "tagged" for the book quiz making the rounds of the blogosverse, but I've been known to invite myself to the party before and I'll make some changes to the list while I'm at it:

1.) Name a book that has changed your life.
About ten years ago I was assigned a review of The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller for The American Enterprise, thus making me a professional writer.

2.) Name a book that you have read more than once.
I, Claudius, Lolita, and several others.

3.) Name a book that you would take to a desert island, a remote village in the Andes or a layover at O'Hare Airport.
Every book list I make must have Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book at least once.

4.) Name a book that the movie adaption is an improvement on.
The Godfather is a good but doesn't have the line, "It's not personal Sonny, its strictly business."

5.) Name a book that should be made into a movie.
The Second Coming would make a great film.

6.) What are you currently reading?
Conversations With Walker Percy, and Notes From Underground.

7.) Name a book that you plan to read.
Too many to mention.

The Last Gentleman

I bought this well worn and well read copy of The Last Gentleman at William James Bookseller in Port Townsend, Washington about ten years ago. The women on the cover holding sheer fabric in front of their nude figures have nothing to do with the book. The current edition is worth reading, but the cover isn't nearly as cool.

Thin Line

Have you given thanks today for the thin neocon line that stands -- at their keyboards -- between civilization and savagery:

So we really are left with very little in these pivotal times--the will of George Bush, of course, the Old Breed unchanged since Okinawa and the Bulge that still anchors the US military, the courage and skill of a very few brave writers like a Hitchens, Krauthammer, and the tireless and brilliant Mark Steyn, but very, very few others. No, this is an age in which we in the West make smug snuff movies about killing an American President, while the Taliban and the Islamists boast of assassinating the Pope.

Animal Farm

This copy of Animal Farm was printed and bound in Kingsport, Tennessee. I don't think that the Author is from around here.

Stick With It

Via A.C., I see that Mark Rose will be with George Bush until the bitter end on Iraq. I'm glad to see some good ole' fashioned American gumption and sticktoitiveness. Think of the great loss to history if Napoleon had turned back from Moscow, or the Donner Party had stopped at a Holiday Inn.

So stick with it Mark, I'm sure you will be vindicated in the end -- if not on Earth, then on whatever planet you currently inhabit.

Old Books

Here is an idea that I stole, er borrowed from Ann Althouse. She posted pictures of 45rpm records that don't play anymore, but she won't throw out. I don't have many of those, but I do have several old books, some that I read, others that just make me look smart:

George Allen meet John Huey Ketchum

I have to admit that I am starting to feel a bit sorry for George Allen. This bizarre controversy over whether the Virginia senator ever used the word "nigger" doesn't say much for the state of self-government or of the priorities of the media. I assume that he is guilty, but that on its own is of little significance. I support the reelection of Robert Byrd, who was in the KKK years ago and even used the "n-word" on TV a few years back; so I can't very well denounce Allen for having used racial slurs.

But as usual, the problem isn't the crime -- but the coverup. Allen could have simply admitted guilt and plagiarized Jesse Jackson's "God isn't finished with me yet" apology made after his infamous "Hymietown" gaffe in 1984.

Somebody should get Allen a copy of Bill Kauffman's sadly out of print novel, Every Man a King (hey, BK, get a copy to Picador, and get a new edition out!). In that book, a rising rightwing pundit named John Huey Ketchum has his career yanked out from under him when he opines that "you can lead a nigger to workfare, but you can't . . ." on CBS's Face the Nation and is reduced to scrubbing factory toilets in his hometown of Batavia, New York. After his fall from grace, John Huey finds happiness in housing-project obscurity and white-trash love with a woman willing to overlook his sin if she can figure out what it is:

"It was a mistake, I think," he said haltingly. "I had a newspaper column in quite a few papers around the country. I wasn't famous, but I was on the right track. Then I got invited to go on Face the Nation, the boring talk show about politics that's on Sunday mornings."

She betrayed no recognition of this anti-Sabbath institution.

"Anyways, I was on the show, debating this black guy about welfare. He was doin' this boring recital of bullshit facts and arguments, and I was doin' mine. He'd say blahblahblah. I'd counter with blahblahblah. . . .It was the usual Washington bullshit. Until all of a sudden somethin' came over me. Like a demon or succubus or some evil goddamn sprit invaded my body, and before I knew it I said the word 'nigger' on national TV."

He waited for a gasp, a shocked "John Huey, you didn't" Wanda said nothing. He went on . . .

The Long Emergency

I saw a great talk at UT tonight by James Howard Kunstler, the author of Home from Nowhere, and several other books. He spoke on the topic of his most recent work, The Long Emergency. I'm not quite ready to buy his notion that the world will soon reach peak oil production and the American Way of Life as we know it will collapse, but he is an entertaining and iconoclastic speaker and I don't think his message can just be dismissed.

After the talk, I had him sign a book and discussed his fellow Upstate reactionary, Bill Kauffman; for whom Kunstler provided a blurb to Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette.

I'm glad I went out tonight --Tuesday UT features a Tweedle De/Tweedle Dum debate with Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart. Zzzzzz.

Some Observations . . .

from Dr. Percy:

"If there is such a thing as a Southern way of life, part of it has to do with not speaking of it."--The Thanatos Syndrome, 1987.

"There is one sure cure for cosmic explorations, grandiose ideas about God, man, death, suicide, and such -- and that is nausea. I defy a man afflicted with nausea to give a single thought to these vast subjects."

"What do you do if you can't stand people yet need a person?"-- The Second Coming, 1980.

"Here is an incidental discovery: If you tell somebody what to do, they will do it. All you have to do is know what to do. Because nobody else knows."--Lancelot, 1977.

"I do believe the South has produced more high-minded women, women of universal sentiments, than any other section of the country except possibly New England in the last century. Of my six living aunts, five are women of the loftiest theosophical panBrahman sentiments. The sixth is still a Presbyterian."-- The Moviegoer, 1961.

Separation of What?

Just when I thought that my opinion of the Republican regime in Washington couldn't go any lower, I pick up this tidbit from the October American Prospect:

Cheney regularly attends Senate Republican caucus meetings, sometimes accompanied by Karl Rove. Just in case Cheney and Rove needed help keeping the caucus in line, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, was handpicked by the White House to succeed the ousted Trent Lott.

I knew that Frist was little more than a sockpuppet for the Whitehouse, but this is ridiculous. The Senate is in an entirely different branch of government than the president, and it should have its own prerogatives and agenda; even if both are controlled by the same party. Sad to say, it will take a Democratic victory this fall to restore something as basic as the separation of powers.

"Felix"

I'll stay away from the latest bizarre twist in the Virginia race between James Webb and George Allen other than to generally endorse Daniel Larison's take on the issue. Instead I'll note yet another brewing controversy in the already weird Virginia campaign. At NRO's "Sixers," a special blog dedicated to shilling for Republican candidates, Greg Pollowitz notes that the Webb campaign is referring to their opponent as "George Felix Allen Jr."

Pollowitz whines that "the blog left thinks it's emasculating in some way" and notes that "making fun of someone's name is the definition of 'manly', don't you think?" Pollowitz obviously isn't very familiar with American politics -- candidates often derisively refer to their opponents by their full names ("J. Danforth Quayle"; "William Jefferson Clinton"), and as far as "emasculating" Webb I'll just add that John Kerry looks French.

I would prefer to see George Allen loose the election on the important issue -- he is a senatorial rubber stamp for the failed policies of the Bush administration. If he loses because he has been exposed as a 98-pound weakling like the guy in the Charles Atlas ad, that will be fine with me. So much of Allen's appeal is that he supposedly is a real man. I remember last year when National Review published a cover story on Allen by their editor Tina Brown, er, Rich Lowry. Lowry positively swooned because Allen drinks black coffee and revels in focus-group-tested macho activities such as ridin' a Harley and rootin' for Junior. Who would have thought that a few months into the future the sissy Defeatocrats would nominate someone who makes George Allen look like a wimp?

Felix? Sen. Allen will be lucky to avoid becoming Sen. "Boy Named Sue" by election day.

Tennesseans Against Allen

I don't trust the judgement of Rob Huddleston on the James Webb/George Allen "Meet The Press" debate from yesterday. Huddleston, blogging from Tennesseans For Allen describes Webb as "flaky" and "weak and bullheaded." I watched part of the debate as well, and George Allen was the one who looked weak.

Of course, I don't trust my own judgement on the issue since I can't stand the phony-baloney cowboy/Dubya clone and would like to see him suffer a humiliating defeat this fall, or even better -- eke out a narrow victory that is weak enough to kill his presidential ambitions while forcing him to serve out another term in the Senate.

Indeed

Andrew Sullivan notes a rare admission from Glenn Reynolds, of the "currently-deteriorating situation in Iraq and Afghanistan."

This is a momentous statement from one of the more reality-challenged supporters of the Bush Administration's policies. His viewers -- Instapundit is essentially a smug version of the crawl across the bottom of your cable news channel -- almost never get a chance to see such a statement. You rarely get the impression from Instapundit that things have gone seriously wrong in Iraq. I could never find any evidence that he got a copy of Tom Ricks' Fiasco "in the mail." Rarely, does he mention that people other than Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, such as Andrew Bacevich, oppose the war in Iraq. Reynolds hasn't even acknowledged that his own representative in Congress is a conservative Republican and a Presbyterian elder who voted against invading Iraq. C'mon Glenn, let me year you say it: "Jimmy Duncan isn't against the war, he's just on the other side."

Usually, I get the impression from Instapundit that Reynolds believes that everything is just fine in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Rumsfeld and Cheney have done a swell job; if only the Liberal Media and the Democrats would get on board.

Adventures in Google Ads

Currently, there is a Google Ad up at iSteve for Muslim Girl magazine.

Double Incompetence

Victor D. Hanson makes the case, not heard often enough, that Afghanistan is as screwed up as Iraq, though he doesn't characterize it that way:

But if we put aside for the moment the reasons to have gone into each country, the two now look remarkably the same. Both have fragile democratic governments. Radical Islamists--using similar tactics of suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices--are pouring in from sanctuaries across the border, whether Pakistan or Syria and Iran. Bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri themselves have boasted that Iraq, at the heart of the ancient caliphate, is now the frontline theater for the jihadists.

So far the international approval of Afghanistan and its smaller costs have ensured support from the Left. But note, as casualties begin to mount, and the nature of the counter-insurgency fighting increasingly begins to resemble Iraq--as it must in this particular front of a global war--and as the magic multilateral solution proves a mirage, the NATO coalition being no more effective than the coalition of the willing in Iraq, expect to see the Democratic leadership begin to bail on Afghanistan as well.

Unlike Iraq, we invaded Afghanistan with a legitimate justification, but as the Tora Bora battle and Operation Anaconda show, the same incompetent crowd is in charge.

$$$

I asked a question in the comments of a Vodkapundit post and failed to get a satisfactory answer, so I will ask here and spice it up with a little reward.

For a billion dollars, heck let's make it ten: how did invading Iraq and toppling its secular dictator help us in our war against the "Islamofascists"? Think about it for a minute before answering and remember that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Iran and no friend of Osama bin Laden. Now look at the guy in charge in Iraq playing kissyface with that nut from Iran. It seems to me that we might have been better off leaving Saddam alone.

Judascons . . .

The Washington Monthly has a symposium of conservative writers arguing that it is preferable for Republicans to lose control of Congress this fall with contributions from such luminaries as Jeffrey Hart and Joe Scarborough. The introduction states:

With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren't. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks something’s got to change.

Now seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006. Well, let’s be diplomatic and say they’d prefer divided government--soon.

I haven't read them all yet and can only assume that they are liberally sprinkled with terms like "disaster," "disgrace," "miserable failure" and "incompetent."

Works and Days . . .

Great news! Victor Davis Hanson has a new blog hosted by Pajamas Media called Works and Days. For readers not as erudite and learned as Hanson, I will tell you that "Works and Days" refers to a poem by Hesiod, a Greek guy.

So get out your pipe and jacket-with-elbow-patches and be prepared for plenty of learned references to Thucydides and F Troop.

Decoration Day

For reasons I've never bothered to learn, many in the War Party strongly dislike Google. Jonah Goldberg, for example, is upset that they have nothing commemorating 9/11 while Dogpile has a picture of a dog sitting behind some American flags. I don't know about Goldberg, but I already own American Flags -- I just use Google for searching on the web.

Goldberg even quotes a disgruntled ex-Googler:

It took me two minutes to switch from Google toolbar to Dogpile toolbar. The best part was that the Google uninstall page had a comments box asking why I was getting rid of their service. I let them know. Believe me, I let them know.

Oddly, neither Goldberg nor his correspondent seem to upset about the lack of decoration on the homepage of other search engines such as Yahoo! and Ask.com, and here's the crowning irony -- at NRO's the Corner.

Privatize This!

Matthew Yglesias succinctly explains the problem with privatization. "There really are certain pathologies associated with government work. When money is allocated by a political process rather than a market process it tends to be allocated less efficiently. The trouble with privatization as a remedy to this problem is that it . . . doesn't remedy the problem, the money is still being allocated by a political process."

Bingo. I have long thought of most privatization schemes as bogus, Yglesias explains why without even breaking a sweat.

Spin Cycle

Glenn Reynolds notes some battle success in Afghanistan and invents an "MSM-style" negative spin headline to accompany it: "Over 200 killed in renewed Afghan violence."

Darned MSM, putting a negative spin on one of our glorious victories -- at least in Glenn's fantasy world. Reynolds didn't find any actual examples of negative media spin, and the most obvious one didn't even dawn on him -- that this is yet another example of the consequences of the Bush administration hastily declaring victory and failing to follow through.

But that is closer to reality than to spin. The war in Afghanistan is supposed to be over and we are supposed to have won. But the war goes on, as the New York Times reports in an obviously Liberal MSM slanted story:

On a July morning, Taliban gunmen shot dead the province's most powerful cleric as he walked to the main city mosque to lead morning prayers. Five months later, they executed a teacher at a nearby village school as students watched. The following month, they walked into another mosque and gunned down an Afghan engineer working for a foreign aid group, shooting him in the back as he pressed his forehead to the ground and supplicated to God.

This spring and summer, the slow and methodical siege of this southern provincial capital intensified. The Taliban and their allies set up road checkpoints, burned 20 trucks and slowed the flow of supplies to reconstruction projects. All told, in surrounding Helmand Province, five teachers, one judge and scores of police officers have been killed. Dozens of schools and courts have been shuttered, according to Afghan officials.

The Great War and Modern Memory

Since everyone is intent on drawing historical parallels these days, Jonathan Chait produces a solid one in his Los Angeles Times (registration required) column: the 2006 midterm elections and the First World War.

Despite being called a "world" war, the vast majority of fighting from 1914-1918 took place in a relatively limited space. The same is true of the 2006 elections. Collectively, they are a national election, but for most Americans, the fight will take place "over there." The battle for control of the Senate will take place mostly within five states where Republicans, who hold a five-seat advantage, look vulnerable: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Missouri. Democrats lead in the first four and appear close to a tie in Missouri. To win the Senate outright, the Democrats would have to sweep those states and win one more, most likely Tennessee, a conservative state where the Republican has retired, or Virginia, a moderately conservative state where incumbent Republican George Allen is in a a tight race with former Reagan official-turned-Democrat James H. Webb.

A pretty interesting argument, but I can't quite swallow his conclusion. "Democrats are probably far too giddy about what they can accomplish if they win in November. They aren't going to be able to stop the war in Iraq, and they won't banish pork-barreling or back-scratching. But that's OK. Woodrow Wilson didn't make the world safe for democracy, but he did manage to keep a pretty noxious regime from dominating a continent." Actually there is a compelling case that Wilson helped pave the way for two regimes far more noxious than Imperial Germany to dominate Europe.

Let's Pretend

I wish the War Party would make up its mind which year they are pretending this to be and who they are pretending to be Hitler. In the last few weeks, it has been 1938 with that guy in Iran filling in for Hitler. Now for Jeffrey Lord, its 1942, which would tend to make Saddam Hitler again.

I can see why they don't want to live in 2006, where they have led the country into a disasterous quagmire in Iraq because, as it turns out, Saddam Hussein had a few aged chemical weapons.

In 2006, the War Party is wrong about the past three years and faces an uncertain future. When they pretend that it's 1938 or 1942, at least they know how things turn out.

Drool Bib

I hope that Power Line's John Hindraker wears a drool bib when he associates with Republican politicians --the results can get messy. He had an encounter with Bill Frist recently and likes what he sees. "Consider me impressed" he says. He is impressed with the senator's "intelligence, competence, judgment and reliability." That's nice.

More rational people might note that Frist's main accomplishments are, while leading the party of federalism and limited government in the Senate, the great expansion of Medicare and federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case (while giving his infamous "diagnosis" on the Senate floor). Putting party above country, he has kept the Senate from conducting meaningful investigations into the corruption, incompetence and dishonesty surrounding the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In spite of his loyal service as a partisan hack, I predict that Frist's presidential campaign will sink without a trace. By March of 2008, there will be more evidence for the existence of Atlantis.

P.S. It is fortunate that Frist has two feet to grovel at so that Power Line's Scott Johnson can join in:

Senator Frist referred to himself several times as a "citizen legislator." I was struck yesterday by how much of a throwback he is to the politicians of the founding era, men of accomplishment in arenas other than politics. He is a gentleman and a scholar as well as a man of enormous professional accomplishment. He briefly mentioned the charitable uses to which he had put his medical skills in founding and serving a hospital in southern Sudan.

Inoperative

Opinion Journal's James Taranto deliver's a devastating blow to my deluded anti-war world view. It turns out that Max Cleland -- who I had counted on to the exclusion of all other sources about the Iraq war -- tries to avoid hearing about what is occurring in the war because the devastating injuries that the former Georgia senator suffered in Vietnam have left him with post traumatic stress disorder. Taranto cleverly asks:

How credible is Cleland as "a vocal critic of the Iraq war" when by his own admission his approach to it is "avoidance, not wanting to connect with anything dealing with" it, and trying "to disconnect and disassociate" from sources of information about it? Something tells us he was better informed in 2002, when he voted for the war--a fact the AP inexplicably leaves out.

Taranto is obviously right -- to paraphrase Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler; all previous criticisms of the Iraq War are inoperative. It turns out we were all wrong to listen exclusively to Cleland about the war -- we aren't in a Mesopotamian quagmire after all. The invasion was a glorious success. In fact, most of our troops were withdrawn after a government was formed in the summer of 2003. I bet their new currency is called the Rummy. I haven't bothered to check, but I believe that Ahmed Chalabi is the Iraq ambassador to Israel and he works closely with that country to counter the Iranian threat. When I catch up on my reading I am sure that I will find that Sadr City has become a vibrant high tech corridor with fancy coffee shops and internet cafes.

I have alerted the management of Antiwar.com and they assure me that their new domain will be Prowar.com. I can only imagine how embarassed Justin Raimondo is after penning three columns a week for the last three years, based exclusively on the reports of Max Cleland.

Finally, let me join Taranto in sneering at Cleland. So the former Georgia senator, who lost three limbs in Vietnam (boo hoo, he still has an arm) got a little weepy over hearing about casualties in Iraq. Hey, if you want to make a neocon souffle, you gotta break a few thousand eggs.

Stagnation

The New York Times exlpains why the Republicans don't seem to be getting credit for a strong enconomy:

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity -- the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation's living standards -- has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability."

A Million Deaths . . .

What does incredible stupidity look and sound like? Rush Limbaugh notes that:

The number of highway deaths in this country, 43,443 in 2005, is 40 to 50 times our troop losses in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Well, ten or 20 times at least. And a whole lot more deaths per month than any civil war in Iraq, if there was or is a civil war in Iraq. I don't know whatever happened to "if it bleeds, it leads," but there's a whole lot more bleeding on our highways than in the war zone in Iraq out there, and a whole lot more dying going on in the American highway system than there is in the so-called civil war in Iraq . . . For every Cindy Sheehan, there are 40 to 50 mothers who have suffered far worse heartbreak. Cindy's son gave his life for his country, not for going to the drugstore. (emphasis added)
. . . there are agitators in this country who are actively promoting combat losses for political gain. They count a thousand, and then 1,500, and then 2,000, and 2,500. Well, let's do a count of highway deaths on a daily basis, see how long it would take us to get to a thousand if we're having nearly 44,000 a year . . .

Here is an equally valid statistical comparison: I own a dozen pair of socks (full disclusure -- I made that number up), the rate of American and Iraqi deaths in Iraq is vastly higher than my sock ownership level, but that tells you nothing of value.

Limbaugh is thinking like Stalin -- deaths on American highways and in Iraq are simply statistics to him. The former, in his fevered mind, somehow justifying or explaining the latter; which have become a political liability to Bush and the Republicans.

He also compares our highway deaths to civilian casualties in Iraq, while ignoring the vast population difference between the two countries. in excess of 3,400 Iraqi civilians died in July. When you take into consideration the population difference between the two countries -- the U.S. is about 12 times larger than Iraq -- you see that roughly as many Iraqis are getting killed a month in the war as Americans are a year on the highways [3400*12=40,800].

Lukacs on Neocons

John Lukacs on neocons, from an essay titled "The Poverty of Anticommunism" in Remembered Past:

Some of the shrillest prophets of anticommunism in the "conservative" camp . . . were former Communists or Trotskyites. Then in the late 1960s, the wave of neoconservatism arose -- composed mostly of men and women for whom it had taken fifty years to discover that the Russians were anti-Semitic. Since then, all of the dishonest and imbecile Revisionists and Revolutionaries of the 1960s notwithstanding, and all of the lamentable presence of Political Correctness in American universities notwithstanding, the influence of these so-called neoconservatives has been more and more evident, and in certain areas of public discourse even prominent. Are they more honest, or better thant the pinkish lib-lab intellectuals of the twenties and the thirties? In some instances, perhaps yes; generally, alas, no.

It Was 29 Years Ago Today . . .

How time flies. It was 29 years ago today that Elvis Presley (shown here sealing a drug deal with Richard M. Nixon) faked his death.

It's OK, Your Vote Doesn't Matter

Rod Dreher worries that it wasn't worth it to have voted for Bush twice for the Supreme Court picks. Fortunately neither of his votes mattered, so no harm done. My concern is that Roberts and Alito were placed on the court to support executive power, and that the next time Roe v. Wade comes up for a vote, they will uphold it.

This is based on no more than my deep mistrust of the Bush administration and some of the coy answers that both men gave when up for confirmation.

Bravo!

Throw out every other comment on Sen. George Allen's most recent Jackassery, and replace it with the wisdom of Larison:

The most offensive thing about the speech to my ears was not his use of the slur, but the implication that he, preppie Californian transplant and Beltway insider George Allen, was some sort of down-home boy who was in touch with the real people, while the veteran Jim Webb, proud son of Scots-Irish stock, is supposed to be a wine-and-cheeser off partying with Hollywood types.

Heroic Poddy

How do you know when you don't have to read any further? When the first sentence begins, "Norman Podhoretz, one of my heroes . . ."

Patriots vs. Nationalists

A few weeks ago, Scott Richert mentioned Remembered Past by John Lukacs in a post about Jonah Goldberg's "Invincible Ignorance." Richert noted that the book, a collection from ISI Books contains a chapter from a previous Lukacs book to disabuse Goldberg of his foolish notions about patriotism. I'm glad that he did, because I wasn't aware of the book and decided to get a copy for myself. I've only read a small part of it so far (not incuding the chapter Richert mentions), including a chapter called "The Problem of American Conservatism" from 1984. I'll include a quote for Goldberg's benefit, but I doubt it will get through since Lukacs doesn't include any Star Trek references:

They proclaimed themselves to be the prime defenders of Western civilization: yet many of them had a narrowly nationalist, and broadly Californian, view of the world -- narrow enough to be ignorant, broad enough to be flat "I was a nationalist," Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf about his youth, "but I was not a patriot." So were, unfortunately, most American conservatives, unaware of the crucial difference (George Orwell described it in one of his prime essays) between the ideological nationalist and the true patriot: the former is moved by the desire to extend the power of his nation, the latter is moved by the love of his country. . . The true patriot and the true conservative is suspicious of ideology . . . yet the American conservatives were, more often, ideologues . . .

Reality is Optional

Yet another example that for the War Party; facts, logic and reality are all optional. Daniel Henninger in Opinion Journal:

That was unfortunate timing this week for the Lamont Democrats, declaring themselves officially the antiwar party within 24 hours of the Brits foiling an Islamic terror plot to spread thousands of U.S.-bound bodies across the North Atlantic, or perhaps across New York, Boston and Washington as the planes descended. Yes, we know; they support the war on terror but are merely against George Bush's war in Iraq. How does that work?

Last week before the Lamont victory, 12 members of the congressional Democratic leadership sent President Bush a letter urging that he start a phased pullout from Iraq, euphemized as a "redeployment," starting before the end of this year. But it is becoming increasingly fantastic to argue that Iraq, with its apparently limitless supply of suicide bombers, hasn't much to do with the terror threats manifest elsewhere.

Put it this way: From the perspective as of yesterday of getting on a U.S. airliner, who would you rather have in the Senate formulating policy toward this threat--Ned Lamont or Joe Lieberman? (Emphasis Added)

Now, why is it "increasingly fantastic" to "argue that Iraq . . . hasn't much to do with the terror threats manifiest elsewhere?" Henninger doesn't say. I'm not sure how the British broke up the most recent terror plot, but I'm pretty sure that U.S. Marines getting blown up by IED's in Iraq had nothing to do with it.

The American Century

Andrew Bacevich, in the What is Left, What is Right issue of The American Conservative:

The American Century is a morality tale. It instructs and inspires but also warns. It tells of how Americans, having lost their innocence on Dec. 7, 1941, rose up in righteous anger to smite a succession of evildoers. The American Century began when the nation finally embraced its providentially assigned mission to spread liberty around the world. Present-day adherents to this school--self-described liberals like Peter Beinart no less than self-described conservatives like William Kristol--do not doubt that the events of Sept. 11, 2001 simply inaugurated the next phase of this grand undertaking. Absent a failure of nerve on the part of the American people--the bogeyman of isolationism always lurks nearby--final victory in the global war on terror is certain to be ours, thereby securing the utopia of permanent U.S. global dominion. The story of the American Century, endlessly reiterated by members of the political elite, has become our substitute for history.

In the opposing camp are those who credit America's rise to power to something other than righteousness and a dedication to liberty for all. It was not righteousness that bought Louisiana, took California, annexed Hawaii, seized the Philippines, and converted the Caribbean into an American lake. Nor did past administrations collaborate with Stalin, court the Saudi royals, depose Mossadegh, befriend Somoza, arrange the overthrow of Diem, court Mao, and tilt in favor of Saddam against the ayatollahs because of our devotion to democracy and human rights.

Fuddie-Duddies

Count on Roger Simon to post one of the more inane commentaries on Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut.

No one looks dopier today than the collection of self-righteous fuddy-duddies who voted for Ned Lamont in Tuesday's Democratic Primary in Connecticut. In the darkness of his soul Lamont himself must be wondering how to react to the news that another ten jets filled with innocent human beings were about to explode over the Atlantic. Not good for his campaign. It reminds me of the old LA Weekly cartoon: "Nuclear War? There goes my career!"

Since Lamont's big issue was Lieberman's continued support of the failed war in Iraq, I don't see how the terror plot in England. Fortunately, one of the comments points out Simon's logical failing:

The events in Britain do nothing to make that war seem a better idea. If anything, the foiled plot demonstrates that good policework is quite effective in stopping terrorism. It points out the futility of killing Iraqis when plots are being hatched in Britain, and more generally, the silliness of the "fighting them over there" idea.

Horses

National Review Online is your Back-To-School Headquarters for hysterical and stupid commentary on the Connecticut primary. Their in-house talk radio cretin, Mark Levin, comments that "Lamont follows in the great tradition of his uncle, Corliss Lamont, who was a courageous pacifist during the rise of the Nazis, just as Little Neddy has been heroic in his adamant appeasement of the Islamo-Nazis." Um, whatever.

His colleague, Cliff May flogs, a Neocon dead horse that should instead be given a dignified burial.

The war we are fighting -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- is nasty and bloody and we are not doing very well. But this is the face of war in the 21st century. We either learn to win such battles or we get used to getting whipped; maybe we even start to like getting whipped. Think of John Murtha almost bragging about the retreats he has favored in the past, from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993 -- as though those retreats did not pave the way to 9/11/01. (emphasis added)

The lesson that neocons take from Beirut and Mogadishu is that our retreats from those occupations showed us to be a weak horse to bin Laden. And so they did. Their solution is to continue such missions no matter how unrelated to the national interest they might be.

An equally, and perhaps even more valid lesson, is to not get involved in such situations in the first place. Beirut and Somalia were unrelated to our national intersest, while Iraq was contrary to the national interest from the start. Perhaps we should stay home next time and look like a horse that can mind our own business.

Arf

Jed Babbin, in the midst of yet another hysterical, rightwing defense of Joe Lieberman ("Now the Michael Moore-Pinch Sulzberger-Cindy Sheehan Dems are about to purge poor ol' Joe Lieberman from their party in Tuesday's primary because he supports the war in Iraq.") drops this statement on the reader:

Last week the Associated Press joined Team Clinton by helping her prepare for Lieberman's fall. On Wednesday, there was an AP story written around her letter to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld commanding him to reverse course and testify at a hastily scheduled Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq. The story, of course, quoted no Republicans, but made up a "furor' about Rumsfeld's declining to testify. Then, when the Big Dog changed his mind and showed up to debate the ankle-biters, AP obliged with another story -- again featuring Mizz Hillary and her "showdown" with Rumsfeld -- that reported him in disorganized retreat from her furious onslaught. (If he was in retreat, so was Patton at Bastogne.) (emphasis added)

Ignore his hysterical notion that there must some conspiracy involved because the AP covered a senate hearing -- Babbin believes that Rumsfeld is such a Great Man, a giant even; that the senators who dare to question him are like tiny, yapping dogs.

Mr. Roberts Flops

A while back I noted the sickening campaign of Richard Roberts who ran for the Republican nomination for the First Congressional District of Tennessee. His only campaign theme, other than emty prattle about "East Tennessee Common Sense, was his steadfast support for President Bush and his Iraq fiasco:

Too many Americans seem to have forgotten what is at stake in the war on terror and the war in Iraq -- but not our Commander-in-Chief. This is a President whose moral, Christian compass is right on target and who is leading the fight for our very way of life.

These days, the so-called political "experts" are telling Republican candidates to keep their distance from a President with a 30% approval rating if they want to get elected. Unfortunately, I have seen some of that sort of thinking right here in East Tennessee.

They couldn't be more wrong.

They are wrong if they think that running from the President will make this country safer. They are wrong if they believe the people of East Tennessee do not support this President. And Republican candidates are wrong if they rely on poll numbers to decide what to do.

As it turns out, "Bush, Iraq . . . Bush, Iraq" wasn't such a good campaign theme. Mr. Roberts finished third.

UPDATE: Another real winner that I commented on earlier, Ralph McGill; received 13 per cent of the vote against the incumbent, Jimmy Duncan. McGill is the guy who favors a one consecutive term limits and who, though living in church-laden Knoxville, believes that "we have religious freedom and tolerance for Muslims, atheists, and everyone else, but not for Christians." He is gone and will be forgotten.

Is That Your Final Answer?

Steve Sailer asks:

If Shi'ites with ties to Iran are the most dangerous people in the world, as the neocons are saying this week, then why did the neocons three years ago want to invade Iraq in order to put in as President of Iraq a Shi'ite who frequently vacations at his villa in Tehran: Ahmad Chalabi?

Fortunately I have a source at Neocon Secret Headquarters who gave the following reply:

Well, um . . . You see, we wanted to force Iran, um . . . The Shi'ites in Iraq are . . . By toppling Saddam we . . .

Oh, yeah, that's it: Sailer is anti-Semitic, Sailer is anti-Semitic, Sailer is anti-Semitic. Yeah, why else would he raise such unfair questions? I bet he hates America too.

Mirror Image

I see via A.C. Kleinheider, that that the Baptist-libertarian blogger Glen Dean has taken out his broad brush to tar the "world's elites," "paleo-cons" and "liberals" as anti-Semites:

Although the world's elites and America's paleo-cons may word things much differently while sober, juice them up with a little bit of fire water and they'll likely make the same types of statements made by Mel Gibson. If I am wrong please correct me, but the vast majority of these European elites and American Buchananites believe that the Iraq War, September 11, and everything going on in the middle east today is the fault of Israel and the American Jews behind neo-conservatism. . .

That's the truth, and the American paleo-cons and liberals they have aligned with, know it.

Well I would like to correct him, but his statement is so absurdly overbroad to be almost meaningless. Who qualifies as the "world's elites"? Dean further complicates matters with a comment at Kleinheider's site saying, "AC, I never called anybody an anti-Semite." Of course not, he only said that certain people, while under a Jack Daniels truth serum would drunkenly declaim their true feelings of "Fxxxxxg Jews . . . The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." And that would represent their true views.

I don't know much about world elites or liberals, but I am sometimes grouped with the paleos because I write for The American Conservative and Chronicles and many of my links are to people or organizations with some sort of paleo sympathies (some even certified). I don't know of any of them who believe that the "Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" or for 9/11. There has been much criticism in paleo circles of Israel's influence on American policy, such as Pat Buchanan's Whose War? article in 2003. Substantive responses to this criticism are much more rare than charges of anti-Semitism.

Osama bin Laden made his reasons for attacking the United States clear in his 1998 Fatwah. First among them was that "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Only later does he mention our desire to "serve the Jews' petty state." Pat Buchanan repeatedly pointed out bin Laden's displeasure with American presence in Saudi Arabia.

Dean's attack is only one example of how the Right is coming to resemble the Left -- nobody can disagree with them without being anti-American, anti-Semitic, etc.

Military Men

More embarrassing twaddle from Thomas Sowell about how lack of military service creates unrealistic expectations in the media and elsewhere. "The military have been criticized for everything from not protecting an Iraqi museum while being shot at to not being as nice to the terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo as people in safe and comfortable editorial offices would like." You would never get the idea from Sowell that military men -- such as John McCain on torture policy -- have been among the strongest critics of Bush administration policy.

Even more notable are the criticisms that Sowell doesn't make. Did the lack of military experience in say, the Vice President's office or in the "safe and comfortable" editorial offices of the Weekly Standard lead to unrealistic expectations of a cakewalk in Iraq? Sowell isn't interested in that question.

Taxation Is Theft, Unless . . .

Julian Sanchez notes that in a Beliefnet interview, Ann Coulter endorses the anarcho-capitalist position that taxation is theft. "Confiscatory taxation enforced by threat of imprisonment is "stealing," a practice strongly frowned upon by our Creator." Sanchez notes that she doesn't really mean it. "If you think it's legitimate for a state to exist, however limited, you're pretty much committed to the proposition that it can legitimately demand the resources necessary to carry out its authentic functions."

I only wish that her Charlotte Allen, who conducted the interview would have asked Coulter how she favors paying for the trillion dollar war she so strongly supports.

The Real Enemy

According to Don Feder, Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite, but Pat Buchanan is the real enemy:

Pat Buchanan is much smoother than Mel in his cups.

Instead of Jews, Buchanan says "neo-cons." Thus, the neo-cons have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. The neo-cons are whispering in Bush's ear. The neo-cons are responsible for our disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The neo-cons are plotting war with Syria and Iran – all to benefit Israel. (Nobody else is threatened by whack-job mullahs with nuclear weapons, you understand.)

Soon, Pat will be warning us that the neo-cons are poisoning wells, spreading the plague and using the blood of paleo-con children to bake their Passover matzah.

Scoop

Although I am enough of a film buff to have inflicted my opinions on the unsuspecting masses, I rarely go to the movies these days. They are expensive and I get so many great films on DVD or via Turner Classic Movies, that going to a theater seems a waste.

However, I did go to see Woody Allen's latest film, Scoop, yesterday afternoon. I won't offer a review, in fact I can't. My mind doesn't work fast enough to take in all of the detail of a movie without a pause/rewind function, which is why I review books -- they wait around for you. But back to the movie -- it stars the insanely beautiful Scarlett Johansson as an American journalism student vacationing in London, who pairs up with an aging magician (Allen) to investigate a tip in a murder case from a dead reporter. It sounds kind of crazy, but it works out.

A recent Washington Post profile notes that "with the possible exception of Charlie Chaplin, nobody has ever directed, written and acted in as many standout movies as Woody Allen, and he did it without anyone else, except for an occasional co-writer, vetting his lines." He is in one sense a hard working director, but the same Post profile notes that Allen doesn't kill himself to make a picture:

Perfectionism is not his style. Asked why he doesn't try the Stanley Kubrick approach to filmmaking, which involved fine-tuning for years, Allen plaintively says he doesn't have it in him.

"Kubrick was a great artist. I say this all the time and people think I'm being facetious. I'm not. Kubrick was a guy who obsessed over details and did 100 takes, and you know, I don't feel that way. If I'm shooting a film and it's 6 o'clock at night and I've got a take, and I think I might be able to get a better take if I stayed, but the Knicks tipoff is at 7:30, then that's it. The crews love working on my movies because they know they'll be home by 6."

People (meaning me) would probably pay to see Scarlett Johansson, who was also in Allen's previous film, Match Point, fold laundry for 90 minutes. But part of her appeal comes from the quirky, offbeat movies that she appears in, such as Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Cynics may suggest that this post was merely an excuse to post her picture and I have no satisfactory response to that charge.

David Horowitz:

The "left" is responsible for Israel's coming defeat because they are against Joe Lieberman, or something like that.

Kill 'Em All . . .

According to Victor Davis Hanson, there are no civilians in Lebanon. Apparently every man, woman and child is a legitimate target:

"Civilians" in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.

He has a whole glossary of terms demonstrating how the media and critics are unfair to Israel. Oddly, all of the terms are in quotes but none are attributed to a source. Through the magic of the World Wide Web, Hanson could have provided links to sources demonstrating the accuracy of what he is saying -- like Justin Raimondo does -- but I suppose we are expected to take him at his word.

Is This Guy For Real?

Did Lil' Poddy really publish an entire column consisting of snide questions? Is this guy for real? Does anybody take John Podheretz seriously any more? Did anybody ever argue that "America was attacked because it cast too intimidating a shadow"? Is that actually an "oft-expressed concern"? Is the case for the various wars that Poddy supports so weak that they can't be made directly?

Again I ask, is this guy for real?

Mortal Struggle

Rod Dreher linked to a Tony Blankley column yesterday on the nature of the war against "Islamists" that America is currently fighting:

President Bush has failed in five years to successfully make the case either to America or to the Western world that we are, in fact, in a mortal, worldwide struggle, what my old boss Newt Gingrich recently called World War III; what I called "The West's Last Chance" in my book last year; and what I and many others have called the clash of civilizations.

I am under no delusions about the nature of Islam. In the February 1999 issue of Chronicles, Srjda Trifkovic (author of The Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad) wrote that to "understand Islam's record with its non-adherents, one should compare it not to Judaism nor Christianity, but rather match it against modern totalitarian ideologies, notably Bolshevism and National Socialism. Each explicitly denied the legitimacy of an form of social, political, or cultural organization other than itself." Note that he is not referring to "Islamism" or "Islamofascism" but Islam. However, Trifkovic shouldn't be confused with the World War Whatever crowd. Back in March he told Jamie Glasov of Frontpage that:

Bin Laden's network may have been damaged and disrupted since 2001 and his cause may in many places be in the hands of self-starters and amateurs, but he could never have dreamed that the world, almost five years after 9-11, would look so favorable to his objectives. A new strategy is needed to make it less so. It can never be "won" in the sense of eliminating the phenomenon of terrorism altogether, but it can be successfully pursued to the point where the Western world can be made significantly safer by adopting measures - predominantly defensive measures - that would reduce the danger to as near zero as possible. The victory will come not by conquering Mecca for America, but by disengaging America from Mecca (energy independence is a must!) and by excluding Mecca from America with a new immigration policy, soberly defined and rigorously enforced. The risk can, and must, be managed wisely, resolutely, and permanently. (emphasis added)

If Bush had sought the advice of Trifkovic on Sept. 12 2001, the country wouldn't be in the mess it is today.

Blankley is grossly understating when he says that Bush has "failed . . . to successfully make the case . . . to America . . . that we are, in fact, in a mortal, worldwide struggle." Bush not only failed, he did precisely the opposite. As Dreher wrote in his book, "9/11 galvanized New Yorkers, and indeed most Americans, and readied us to do something heroic and self-sacrificing, like, say, embarking on a serious and determined national campaign to save energy." Instead we got a cakewalk accompanied by tax cuts.

Ex

Some guy calling himself "Gaypatriot" says that Pat Buchanan is an "ex-conservative" for failing to support Israel's current war. But he is really upset about Buchanan running long at the 1992 Republican Convention:

I would say that Pat Buchanan represents the last of the conservative anti-Semites. Except that in 1992, Pat Buchanan made clear that he was no longer a Reagan conservative. As you may recall, in his celebrated speech to the Republican National Convention that summer, not only did he make angry statements, but he spoke far longer than the time allotted to him, thus, delaying the speech of the man who was to speak later that evening, a man whose ideas Buchanan once claimed to have championed -- Ronald Wilson Reagan.

What an outrage! But you know, GP has a point. Buchanan has been estranged from the right for some time now, even though he started a magazine called The American Conservative. Since "conservative" has come to be synonymous with Dick Cheney, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt, it's no big loss to be dismissed from their ranks.

80-Proof

Michael Brendan Dougherty offers his advice on picking a whiskey. But one should also consult the views of Walker Percy on his preference for 80-proof Bourbon (from the posthumus essay collection Signposts in a Strange Land):

Consider. One knocks back five one-ounce shots of 80-proof Early Times or four shots of 100-proof Old Fitzgerald. The alcohol ingestion is the same . . . Yet in the case of Early Times, one has obtained an extra quantum of joy without cost to liver, brain, or gastric mucosa. . . An apology to the reader is in order, nevertheless, for it has occurred to me that this is the most unedifying and even maleficent piece I ever wrote -- if it should encourage potential alcoholics to start knocking back Bourbon neat. It is also the unfairest. Because I am, happily and unhappily, endowed with a bad GI tract, diverticulosis, neurotic colon, and a mild recurring nausea, which make it less likely for me to become an alcoholic than my healthier fellow Americans. I can hear the reader now: Who is he kidding? If this joker has to knock back five shots of Bourbon every afternoon just to stand the twentieth century, he's already an alcoholic.

Self Delusion

This is what self-delusion looks like:

Having expended the lives of 2,500 soldiers already, will we not stick it out another year or two -- risking perhaps another 800-1,000 U.S. deaths -- in order to crush the terrorists, and to establish a stable government in Iraq?--Robert Stacy McCain

Is their any conceivable reason to hope that in another year or two we would be closer, rather than further away from "stable government in Iraq"? At least he's not Tom Friedman.

Crunchies and Reactionary Radicals Unite!

Jason Edwards, of Grove City College has a review up of Look Homeward America and Crunchy Cons:

Cold War politics indeed made strange bedfellows, and some conservatives are increasingly disturbed to discover with whom they have been sleeping. Regret over this conservative marriage of convenience has simmered for years, but in 2006 some “divorce” papers have been filed as two new books outline potentially irreconcilable differences. Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons and Bill Kauffman’s Look Homeward, America both seek to analyze what it means to be “conservative” in the 21st century. The primary disconnect both address is the conservative allegiance to the free market (and un-defined “progress”) in light of the fact that industrial capitalism has undermined family stability, healthy stewardship of the earth, limited government, and religious consciousness (all things that rank far higher with traditional conservatives than making a buck).

Tough Guys

National Review's "Sixers" blog, dedicated to the midterm elections has a series of increasingly hysterical posts from Greg Pollowitz about a debate in Virginia between James Webb and George Allen, Jr. If Pollowitz is an indication, Webb has rightwingers running scared. At times Pollowitz can't make up his mind -- Webb is either parroting Democratic talking points or revealing himself as too cozy with Republicans. Pollowitz frets on behalf of the far left because Webb indicates that he would support some Republican judges:

Webb’s stance on Alito, however, is what should be looked at by Democrats. He was very careful at the debate to say that he didn’t have enough information to know if he would or would not vote for Alito.He said he would have voted to filibuster, but not on the merits of Alito. He would have filibustered only because he felt Democrats on the judiciary committee were not given enough information. As we all know, that line of thought was total and utter nonsense. But, let’s say for the moment that Ted Kennedy was given more information on Alito and Princeton, etc. Would Alito have failed confirmation? Highly unlikely. Webb is dodging big time here.

I don't often give advice to Democrats, but as a general rule they should use caution when taking advice from a one of the other side's partisans. I can easily see why leftwingers would root for and support a cultural (but not social) conservative like James Webb. His campaign offers a decent chance to pick up a seat for their side in a conservative state and take out a potential Republican presidential candidate. Webb is to the right of Joe Lieberman, but on the big issue of the day Webb is closer to the left; and he hasn't carried water for the Bush administration.

Pollowitz's last post on the Webb/Allen debate is of an email from a peeved Northern Virginia reader:

I live in Northern Virginia and see Jim Webb yard signs everywhere, and I am struck but how disgustingly cynical they are. This is supposed to be the Dem's anti-war candidate, yet what do his yard signs say? "Born Fighting." That to me is a deeply cynical take on the electorate: that we want a tough guy and he needs to fashion himself as one even though his stated policy positions place him squarely among the cut-and-run crowd. It is appalling.

But in the People's Republic of Alexandria, VA, it doesn't matter who runs or on what issues: so long as a candidate is "agin" President Bush, that candidate will do well in our land of the knee-jerk Left.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Webb would have the slogan "Born Fighting" on his signs since he wrote a book a few years ago called Born Fighting. The emailer is wrong that Webb is "fashion[ing]" himself as a tough guy. Among the political/intellectual/talking head class, Webb is one of the few genuine tough guys. He's a heavily decorated Marine who boxed at the Naval Academy. And Pollowitz's correspondent should pay more attention; the phony tough guy in that race is George Allen, Jr. And the "cut-and-run crowd" is brimming with "tough guys."

Shameless

"Captain" Ed (who's a Trekkie, not a Navy man) is an Iraq war supporter with the gall to criticize the UN's handling of Kosovo. I didn't support the NATO campaign against Kosovo in 1999, but I wouldn't suggest that the problem is that it should have been handled more like Iraq. "Captain" Ed, however disagrees:

People claim that the Bush administration had no plan for Iraq, but we helped the Iraqis form a representative government and held three national elections in less than half the time that the United Nations has sat on Kosovo. After bombing the Serbian army and forcing them to withdraw, the UN did nothing to address the status of the Kosovars for seven long years. In that time, ethnic violence has claimed the lives of dozens as the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians both jockey for position and power in advance of the talks.

I hate to minimize murder on any scale but dozens? The utter shamelessness of these people never ceases to amaze me. Here is "Captain" Ed -- ignoring the thousands of Americans Killed and maimed in Iraq and the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, ignoring civil war engulfing that country -- lecturing the UN about its handling of Kosovo.

Like I said -- shameless.

Well . . .

Do we get the government we deserve, or don't we?

Never Mind

Perhaps Glenn Reynolds ought to read Pat Buchanan himself instead of relying on John Podheretz's interpretation and accuses him of calling Israel "un-Christian." Since Lil' Poddy doesn't specify the source of his charge, I'll assume that he's referring to the column where Buchanan says:

"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza, who have had all power cut off by Israeli air strikes, an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left them with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.

And anyway, why is it "anti-Semitic" (does this even mean anything anymore?) to call Israel "un-Christian"? Reynolds adds "Never mind what I'd call Pat Buchanan . . ." No problem there Glenn.

Geography Lesson

It wouldn't be the American Spectator without the Clinton obsession. Wlady Pleszczynski writes about Bill Clinton's appearance with Joe Lieberman:

Why would Bill Clinton choose Waterbury as the spot of his appearance for Joe Lieberman? A friend writes:"Waterbury is considered a pivot point in the 1960 Kennedy campaign, where the worshipful crowds foreshadowed a Kennedy win. Clinton has to know this. Given his ongoing emulation of JFK, is this location an accident? I have no idea . . ."

Yeah, there's the Kennedy angle; but isn't it also possible that he went their because, it's you know, in Connecticut?

Non-Human Corporations

Note some of the language in this post from the rightwing film blog, Libertas. It engages in a bit of preelection bet-hedging by blaming the forthcoming humiliating defeat of the Republicans on Hollywood. The post is about a presumably hagiographic movie about RFK. I'm no fan of Bobby, aptly described by Bill Kauffman as a "thuggish Marilyn-mauling (Joe) McCarthyite," but I don't see a movie about him seriously affecting the next election:

The fact that Hollywood continues to portray everything Republicans do (including fighting the War on Terror) as ill-motivated is something that has an effect on the public over time, and we’re probably going to see the results during the election . . .

Yeah, that's it. The Republicans are in trouble not because of their failings in the real world, but because the movies are mean to them. Libertas also notes that those identified as a "conservative/Christian/Republican/corporation/whatever" the movies turn you into a "dangerous, and almost non-human Other." Ignore the obvious for a moment -- corporations are by definition non-human. I don't see recently released movies often enough to know -- are movies these days the equivalent of Nazi propaganda? The examples Libertas lists do not give enough details to make the case.

Libertas is so exercised I'm surprised that instead of preparing for a Hollywood-induced Republican defeat at the polls this November that they aren't preparing their readers for a new Kristallnacht.